FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT HUD - PAGE 3

At the appointed hour, a sleek, maroon Cadillac Coupe de Ville with a soft camel-colored top rolled gently to a stop outside 540 E. 36th Pl. in the graffiti-marred Ida B. Wells public-housing complex. Out from behind the wheel slid Gertrude W. Jordan, Midwest regional director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It was 3 p.m. Wednesday. Mayor Harold Washington was off in the nation's capital, attempting to block HUD's takeover of the Chicago Housing Authority, while Jordan was in town taking in the spoils.

Following in the footsteps of south suburban Country Club Hills, University Park has passed an ordinance requiring firms that manage foreclosed property in the village for the government or a private institution to obtain a license from the village. The ordinance, approved by village trustees earlier this month, is in response to concerns about the upkeep and sale of foreclosed properties, especially by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, throughout the south and southwest suburbs.

A former member of Gov. James Thompson's Cabinet was sworn in Monday as Midwest director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Gertrude W. Jordan, assistant director of the state's Central Management Services for the last three years, was appointed by HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce Jr.

Your recent series "Sheltered by Design" provided comprehensive insights into public housing. It also offered models that give hope for dealing with this complex issue. The Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) worked early in its 61-year existence to eliminate substandard housing. Later, MPC helped foster resident management and led public housing management-reform efforts. As the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) begins a new life under the control of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

About 35 Uptown residents picketed the Chicago headquarters of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Monday to protest rent increases in a HUD-financed apartment building. The group demanded that HUD reverse a decision that allowed the owner of a 22-story building at 833 W. Buena Ave. to escape federal rent ceilings by prepaying his low-interest federal mortgage. They said rents in the 209-unit building have risen 20 to 30 percent since the owner, a partnership headed by Chicago attorney Dennis Fields, paid off the $1.8 million remaining on the 40-year mortgage and refinanced the loan at market-rate interest in hopes of charging market-rate rents.

When Ronald Gatton served as regional director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Carter administration, he owned two small Chicago condominiums and a $30,000 rental unit in Oskaloosa, Ia. Since leaving the federal government, Gatton has accumulated more than a half-dozen pieces of multiunit rental properties-all subsidized by the government-worth more than $1.5 million, according to his 1988 personal financial statement....

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros is expected to announce Friday that a top aide, Joseph Shuldiner, will be named the permanent executive director of the Chicago Housing Authority, according to sources in Chicago. Shuldiner has been acting chairman of the CHA since HUD took over the authority May 30 after Chairman Vincent Lane and the board resigned under a cloud of mismanagement. The disclosure came as HUD officials outlined their plans to eliminate 443 jobs and defer $20 million in CHA renovation projects to help plug a $52 million hole in the authority's modernization budget.

By A digest of coming events, compiled by Joseph Sjostrom | September 6, 1998

West Side families who say lax lending standards for FHA-guaranteed loans have left them in danger of losing their homes through foreclosure will make their case at a public forum before Ira Peppercorn of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Activists want HUD to help families stave off foreclosure. ---------- 7 p.m. Thursday at Circle Christian Ministries, 118 N. Central Ave.

By Joel Kaplan and Patrick Reardon. Stanley Ziemba contributed to this report | August 27, 1987

The undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and other top federal housing officials from Washington will meet Thursday in Chicago with a federal "takeover task force" about the future of the Chicago Housing Authority. James Baugh, acting assistant HUD secretary for public housing, denied Wednesday that the meeting was to announce federal plans for a unilateral seizure of the financially distressed CHA, the second largest housing authority in the nation.

Federal housing officials have asked for an investigation into the disappearance from Chicago Housing Authority files of canceled rent subsidy checks made out to the city Department of Housing and reportedly endorsed by its commissioner, according to a local spokesman for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. A HUD review team earlier had seen copies of the Section 8 checks made out to the city housing department, said Adolph Slaughter, spokesman for the regional HUD office.